“There’s a relatively clear path on dramatically reducing the costs of the cell culture media. So I’d say it's definitely the most pressing bottleneck… not perhaps the most technically involved bottleneck… The recombinant proteins are by far the driving source of those cost contributions where probably anywhere from over 90 to 95% or more of the cost contribution of cell culture media today comes from those recombinant proteins. An independent group at Northwestern University in Chicago came out with a paper this past year… they were able to drop that cost of the media to around 11 dollars per liter… that was a 97% cost reduction in media that this group basically did for fun just to demonstrate that it can be done.”
- Elliot Swartz
Animal-free food technologies, such as new plant-based foods that accurately mimic animal products and cultured meat (meat cultured from animal cells without requiring the slaughter of any animals) have the potential to dramatically displace the consumption of conventional animal products. But what are the bottlenecks in the way of successfully scaling up and reducing the costs of these products? And how can these bottlenecks be overcome?
Dr Elliot Swartz is a senior scientist at The Good Food Institute and the author of a number of in-depth resources on cultured meat. He has previously worked as a consultant in the biotech industry.
Topics discussed in the episode:
- The different stem cell-types that can be used to develop cultured meat, what work still needs to be done in this area, and how it can be done (5:26)
- Cell culture media as the most pressing bottleneck, and the clear path towards addressing this (19:06)
- Scaling up bioprocessing and bioreactors (39:55)
- Scaffold biomaterials as a fourth technical bottleneck (49:43)
- The technical bottlenecks in the way of the improvement and scale-up of highly meat-like plant-based meats and the career paths that are relevant to this area (58:41)
- How Elliot started to get involved in the animal-free food tech space and the similar opportunities that might exist for others to enter the space by synthesizing existing research (1:09:30)
- The lack of funding for research in the space and how this compares to the availability of talent as a bottleneck towards further progress (1:19:39)
- The pros and cons (beyond funding) of seeking technical research opportunities in academic vs. for-profit environments (1:30:09)
- To what extent medical advances in tissue engineering and related areas will drive progress on cultured meat (1:41:19)
- The importance of and opportunities for startups to operate a business-to-business model in the animal-free food technology space (1:45:52)
- When will cultured meat and highly meat-like plant-based meat products become competitive with conventional products in terms of cost and taste? (1:49:02)
- Should the proponents of animal-free food be prioritizing cultured meat or plant-based meat? (1:56:02)
- The skills and characteristics that would make someone an excellent researcher in the cultured and high-tech plant-based meat space (1:58:50)
- The transferability of career capital between academia, startups, and nonprofits and between research into high-tech plant-based meats and cultured meat (2:04:18)
- Concrete opportunities for getting work in this space (2:07:46)
- Which forms of academic and professional expertise are most urgently needed for the development of animal-free food technologies (2:13:43)
Resources discussed in the episode are available at https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/podcast
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